


Insomnia

by Brighid45



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-26 21:26:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2666867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid45/pseuds/Brighid45
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a slightly angsty one-shot that showed up when sleep proved elusive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insomnia

_Three thirty a.m._

You lie in bed and stare at dim patterns of ambient light from the window as they drape softly over various objects in the room. It's been about an hour since you woke, shivering and gasping, in the grip of some dream you cannot remember. It was bad, you know that much; there's no real desire or need on your part to recall anything more.

With a sigh you roll over. You hold your ruined thigh with care so the muscles don't spasm, but of course they do anyway. The relaxant Nolan prescribed for you isn't strong enough. You'll have to tell him when you meet again in a couple of days, because you doubled the dose tonight and it still hasn't helped. You rub the tight ridges of the scar and wish for the thousandth time in the last few hours that the pain would let up enough to allow some restorative sleep. It’s been a bad day, a seven on the good old Scale O' Hurtin', and it hasn't shown any signs yet that it will end.

After several futile attempts to find a comfortable position, you finally turn on the bedside lamp. In the clutter atop the nightstand is a gift from a friend, a new mp-three player with a good set of earphones, not those crappy little buds that hurt like hell but a nice cushy seventies-style pair that feel like clouds. They let you hear the musicians turn pages and use breathing cues, and scrape their chair legs on the cheap linoleum floor of the recording studio as they move and sway and lean forward while they play.

You sort through the offerings on the menu and settle for Dave Brubeck's _Time Out_ —the aural equivalent of comfort food. You still remember the first time you heard 'Take Five'. You couldn't have been more than three, so you and Mom were probably living at Camp Lejeune, which means Dad was in Okinawa. Someone brought the album over for your mother, with the thought she might enjoy it; god knows why, she'd never liked jazz of any kind. She'd given it no more than a brief listen, but you'd played it over and over, especially that cut. The odd meter had tugged at you, sent you to the piano to figure it out until at last Mom had tired of your endless plunking and showed you the places your too-small fingers couldn't yet go, where they rested on the keys to make the sounds that fit the music. As you listen to the recording, you can still feel a moment from the ecstatic, trembling thrill of toddler-age attempts to play the notes the right way. It echoes the delight of the rightness of Brubeck's tight, precise five/four syncopation as it anchors free-form drums, with a quiet bass line that allows the intimate breath of Paul Desmond's alto sax melody to sing like a night bird in velvet blackness.

Now you turn out the light, ease into the pillows and listen to the familiar rhythms, feel the music fill you in a cool, slow flow. Your hands play the sheets lightly, caress invisible keys. You were in college the first time you jammed this chart with a couple of guys from your frat. It was just a pickup band with no drummer, but you had some good sessions together; you were all serious travelers, at least where music was concerned. The three of you eventually went on to med school and residency, passed your boards, but you know one of the guys doesn't play anymore. He doesn't do anything anymore, because he was killed by a drunk driver in a head-on collision five years ago, when he took his family out for ice cream. The other guy is settled into a quiet life in the Midwest somewhere, Ohio or maybe Indiana. You get a Christmas card from him now and then—a fucking _Christmas_ card, for god's sake. You've never sent one back.

You think about what it would be like to have regular working hours, maybe even a family, or at least someone in the bed beside you who isn’t paid to be there. When other people are around, you scoff and mock and ridicule the idea of you involved in something as kinky as a marriage with offspring, but sometimes when you can't sleep you think about it, about the lack of anything that resembles normalcy in the way you live. You remember what John Henry said to you about no woman with a drink and a kiss waiting. For years you told yourself it was a fair tradeoff, to solve the damn puzzles you see everywhere, whether you want to or not. Now, after your breakdown and in the process of treatment you know that's a lie, but it's one you're used to, an untruth you can pretend to believe enough of the time to get you through.

Still, if you're honest with yourself (and god knows you can't be anything else at this hour), it's really about the damn pain. You're actually never alone. There's always a number right there beside you, faithful and inescapable as an obsessed lover. The number leaves no room for anyone else. It will always take precedence; there's even a fairly good chance it will get bigger as the years circle round and round. You can't think of anyone willing to try a relationship with that third party wedged between you both, to hog the bed and use up all the hot water in the morning.

At least the music doesn't care if you're in pain. It's the only thing that helps stitch together the rags of your sanity, most days. It is uninterested in judgment, condemnation, lectures, and it doesn’t poke or prod at you. Music offers a sweet reciprocity, an easement of the tightness inside your head and heart. You won't go as far as to say it brings hope because you know there isn't any, not for you. But it allows you a glimpse of beauty in a world often filled with sordid, dreary sameness, and that's enough. It has to be.

Half an hour before your alarm goes off you slip into light sleep at last, as the crisp five/four pattern of Dave's piano accompanies you into the darkness.


End file.
